I'm not aware of anyone in this thread arguing against the services being offered. Rather, it is the restrictions entailed by them that we disagree with. This has nothing to do with technological advancement, and everything to do with policy and legal decisions at both a government and corporate level. These features certainly could be offered without the onerous DRM, they just aren't.
I over the many years that I've had STEAM have purchased over a hundred STEAM games. I am not aware of any onerous DRM issues and any restrictions by STEAM on my account. I have not once had an issue downloading, re-downloading, updating, validating or playing any of my many STEAM games. While I'm only one single example, the governing corporation Valve/Vivendi sure have proven themselves to me anyway.
Copyright is an artificial construct designed to spur creativity and balance power between conusmers and producers of media. In response to piracy, governments have granted sweeping new rights to rightsholders (which are just ignored by pirates...) while providing no new protections or safeguards to consumers, who now face an increasingly lopsided relationship where they have little to no (legal) recourse. This is what I have a problem with, not the technology or services themselves.
"Artificial construct"? It appears that at the present time quite a few nations of the world are finding out just how much of everything around them in daily life has turned out to be artificial. We can sit here all day discussing "artificial constructs" to what end? Digital distribution and management is the future for media (especially software) for many reasons and sometimes individual rights take a backseat in favour of allowing for more advancement. You seem to have a "rights" problem/issue, while I guess I have a "don't care" position as long as service is provided and/or constantly improved upon (which STEAM is a prime example of).
I feel that your argument is equally applicable to justifying software piracy. "Attempting to get in the way of new and more efficient distribution channels is futile; publishers should just get out of the way to avoid being run over". Saying that someone's rights don't matter if it's holding back technology is an argument I feel holds no water, regardless of whether the rights being stripped are of the producer or the consumer. While both consumers and producers do need to adapt to new technology, the law needs to continually strike a balance between their interest, and right now the legal reality is so lopsided in the favour of the rightsholder that it's actually scary.
It's not my argument. It's what's been happening not only because (as I suspect some of you might suggest) we've been allowing it to happen but more so because each new generation craves such technological advancement. Of course in most cases such advancement can only be possible when individual "rights" aren't legalised to death. Captialism encourages competition through which we enjoy advancement, focus on legislation of rights consumer or producer serves to (among other things) stifle same.